Are you the busiest unpublished writer in existence?

At times it seems I could be. Like now.

I have too many projects to keep up with but I don’t want to give any of them up.

There’s this blog, for instance. Why am I late with writing a new blog? Because there’s no one sitting on my desk saying, ‘Just write the thing. Get on with it.’ At least I’ve now written and posted a new blog page.

There’s my writers’ workshop, meeting next Sunday. Unable to think of a new short story, I’ve submitted an old story which I wrote so long ago, it needs up-dating in social attitudes and trends in ‘caring’ occuaptions. My narrator’s husband now works in a ‘saving the world’ job rather than a ‘save the whale’ job. Hardly ground-breaking literary fiction. If I can’t come up with new work, should I leave the workshop? I don’t want to. I enoy it. I like the other people in it – all two of them – and we have been meeting for over eight years. This workshop is sacrosanct.

There’s my memoir. At least I have made some progress with the self-publishing project. I’ve had an initial quote from a publisher, which looks fair and do-able as far as my bank balance is concerned. Nothing else to do on that, until I go to meet the publishers at their  self-publishing event next week. Next week? I’d better get on with that list of questions I propose to ask.

There’s my collection of short stories about different kinds of death. The stories are written. They just need polishing – and a possible independent publisher identified.

Finally, there’s the on-line course on How To Write a Novel with UnthankSchool which began in January. This is definitely not a project I can abandon. It’s interesting, stimulating and jolly hard work. My plan was that the course would fire me up to rewriting a novel I started a while ago when I was younger, fitter and keener. When I thought I’d write a novel and sell it. This course is to help me achieve my heart’s desire.

So I abandon not one single project.

As Alan Bennett more or less said, ‘Writing is keeping on, keeping on.’